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Art Center Car Classic is a feast for the eyes

October 25, 2011

The east lawn of the Art Center College is filled with cars that showcase automotive design. Photo by MARK VAUGHN

If you can only go to one car show a year . . . OK, then you should go to Pebble Beach. But if you can only go to two . . . OK, Amelia Island. Or Villa d'Este. Let's say if you can only go to five or six car events a year, make sure one of them is the Art Center Car Classic, an eclectic gathering done by and for car designers--and those guys ought to know their cars.

The show is held on the east lawn/Sculpture Garden of the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif. It's a mixture of everything cool and intriguing with wheels, almost all of it from Southern California collectors, museums and design studios.

"There's no show in the world like this," said collector David Sydorick, whose own entries this year showed the breadth of the field: an Alfa Romeo TZ 2 and a perfectly understated Giulietta Spider Veloce. "Nobody in the world has what they have in that building."

"That building" was the Art Center's transportation design section, a place that has produced more than half of the car designers working in the world at any given moment. Distinguished alumni from Peter Brock and Chip Foose to Chuck Pelly and Freeman Thomas were among those on hand. Brock was given a special tribute, with a time line of his design life and several of his cars on the lawn. The latter ranged from a BRE 510 to the Triumph TR-250K.

"I was completely surprised," said Brock of the tribute.

Looking around the lawn there was something to surprise and delight everybody, from cars that could have won at Pebble to cars you could buy on eBay.

The Peter Mullin Collection brought a perfectly restored 1934 Voisin C-27 Aerosport that had so many entertaining details that it could be a show unto itself. Mullin Automotive Museum curator Andrew Reilly showed off many of the car's details to onlookers, our favorite of which was the two-cylinder pump motor that ran off vacuum from the engine to operate the car's retractable hardtop, but only when the engine was running.

"The real focus [at the Art Center Car Classic] is on the merits of design," Reilly said. "So many shows focus on points."

Reilly noted the benefit to the students to have such a display on their campus.

"There's a lot that's worth considering in terms of classic car design. Modern designers are so often held back by cost or other constraints. You could guess that they'd be jealous of the freedom the classic designers of the '20s and '30s had."

Next to Voisin was a 1937 Bugatti Atalante. But behind that was a display of Ford Broncos, from TV newsman Dave Kunz's perfectly original hardtop to Andrew Norton and Todd Zuerher's race Bronco. Designer Jonathon Ward debuted his "ICON" Bronco there as well.

Next to that was a gathering of 1932 hot rods and next to that was a whole mess of Meyers Manxes, lead by the granddaddy of them all--the original Old Red, entered by none other than Bruce Meyers. The design studios brought their concept cars, from the Cadillac Ciel produced at General Motors' studio in North Hollywood to the 2009 Honda P-Nut brought by Art Center alum Dave Merek. Just look through the overall shot of the show and see if there aren't about 40 or 50 cars you'd love to have for a day or two. Up in the parking lot was a phalanx of motorsports entries, from Dan Gurney's DeltaWing IndyCar to Bruce Canepa's ALMS Porsches.

Mark Vaughn
- After slumming in Europe five years covering F1 etc. Mark Vaughn interviewed with Autoweek at the 1989 Frankfurt motor show has been with us ever since because no one else will take him. Anyone?
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